What are you doing to innovate for an obese America?

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on the huge price being paid in health-care spending due to America’s rapidly expanding waistlines: $147B.

How are we as innovators leading companies to address this head on?

Lecturing, hectoring and “education” aren’t changing what’s on America’s plate, or at least not quickly enough.

I recommend reading Hank Cardello’s book “Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s Really Making America Fat.” As a former exec at Coca-Cola and General Mills, he knows the institutional challenges of bringing Health & Wellness (H&W) innovation to market. He also has smart strategies for overcoming them.

Similarly at our firm, we refuse to give up on major Food & Beverage (F&B) category innovation that improves health.

We’re especially excited by five H&W vectors we believe are poised to explode in F&B innovation. We advocate innovating with…

1. The Pleasure Principle – Healthier food that tastes better than not-so-healthy choices
2. Next-Wave Hybrids – Transferring ingredients from one F&B use to another to improve H&W outcomes
3. Ancient Natural Miracles – Going beyond green tea into previously obscure Asian fruits, cocoa and more
4. Process Leaps – Skipping incremental change to create a whole new thing, made a whole new way
5. Right For You = RFY – Appealing to needs for individuality, authenticity and community around food choices

Our 4-minute video “Beyond BFY: The New Spectrum in Heath & Wellness Innovation” outlines these vectors along with current and upcoming examples:

Eager to learn what you’re exploring to grow your bottom line whilst shrinking America’s bottoms!

Joy Bergmann is Communications Director at innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212 in New York.